What's Your Learning Style? (And Why Figuring It Out Now Will Save You Months)
Everyone's brain works differently. Some people absorb information by reading it. Others need to hear it explained out loud before it clicks. Some learn by seeing diagrams and visualizations. Others need to physically do something to understand it. It's just how brains work.
Here's the biggest mistake first-year vet students make: they use the same study method as everyone else, regardless of how their brain actually works. So they end up studying in a way that doesn't work for them, wondering why they're not retaining information, and slowly losing their mind. You could waste months, literal months, studying inefficiently before you figure out what actually works for you.
Don't be that person. Figure out your learning style now, before your first exam, before you fall into bad study habits. Here's what you need to know.
Read/Write Learners
You learn by reading and writing. Your hands need to be involved in learning. Use color-coded notes. Write summaries of lectures. Make lists. Rewrite notes to review them. Create study guides. When you sit in a lecture and just listen without taking notes? You retain almost nothing. When you write? Everything sticks. Your brain processes information through your hands.
Auditory Learners
You learn by hearing information. Record lectures and listen to them multiple times. Study with friends and explain concepts out loud. Read notes aloud to yourself. Teach the material to someone else. Your voice is your study tool. Silent study sessions leave you feeling lost and disconnected. But get you in a room with someone who will listen and let you talk through it? That's when it clicks.
Visual Learners
You learn by seeing information presented visually. Draw diagrams. Create flowcharts. Use mind maps. Color-code everything. Watch videos if they're available. Your brain thinks in images and spatial relationships. Reading a dense textbook is torture. But a good diagram? A clear flowchart of how the system works? That's life-changing.
Kinesthetic Learners
You learn by doing. You need hands-on practice. You need to physically interact with the material. This is probably why you're going into vet medicine in the first place—you want to work with animals, not just read about them. Anatomy lab is your favorite class because you're actually dissecting and seeing structures in real time. Reading about surgery is torture. But actually performing it (under supervision)? That's when you get it.
You're probably a mix of all four learning styles. But you have a dominant one—maybe two. Figure out what it is and build your study strategy around it. Not around what worked in undergrad. Not around how your best friend studies. Around how YOUR brain actually works.
If you're a kinesthetic learner and you spend all your time reading textbooks, you're not going to retain anything and you're going to feel like you're drowning. If you're an auditory learner trying to study silently in the library, you're setting yourself up to fail. Match your study method to how your brain actually works. Stop trying to study like everyone else. That's a recipe for suffering.